


Health Code Violation

by Kryptaria



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Accidental Kittens, Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Deaf Character, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Sharing a Bed, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-17
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-03 20:44:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 14,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14004396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptaria/pseuds/Kryptaria
Summary: It's opening day at Kafe Biblioteka and day one of the worst blizzard to hit D.C. in a century. But ten years in the army taught Bucky to deal with anything life threw at him, including zero customers.Nope. Make that one customer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Infinite thanks to scriptrixlatinae for the beta, the shouty capslock comments, and the title; and to Zephyrfox for the cheerleading and proofread! And special thanks to neverwhere for betaing and catching even more errors. No writer writes in a vacuum. I couldn't do it without you guys. <3

Bucky’s prosthetic glitched just as he was sliding a last stack of vacuum-sealed coffee beans onto the top shelf, bringing the whole damn pyramid down in a rattle that drowned out his sister’s voice. “Hang on!” he shouted at the countertop where his phone rested, letting go of the ladder to try and contain the damage. The last thing he needed was his brand new stainless steel dual-pot drip machine getting dented.

“... are cursed, aren’t you?” Rebecca asked in a voice full of sympathy.

“Shut up,” he muttered, shoving the bags onto what little clear counter space remained. He got down off the ladder before he could kill himself; he’d survived war and an injury that every doctor said should’ve been fatal. He was  _not_  going to die because of a damned ladder.

“It could be worse, I guess.”

He braced his good right hand against the front counter, next to the phone, and started flexing each finger on his left hand, activating the prosthetic’s neural self-calibration routine. “I’m thirty grand in debt, my new arm’s going to be glitching out for the next week, and the shop’s been hit by the worst blizzard D.C.’s seen in a century. On opening day. How could it be worse?”

After a couple of seconds, his oh-so-helpful sister answered, “Nothing’s caught fire from faulty wiring?”

“In my arm or the shop?”

He couldn’t see her, but he could practically feel her wince in the silence.

“Sorry,” he muttered, staring down at the black plates that made up his new hand. He’d had the final model less than a month and was still getting used to it.

“Yeah, um. Mom wanted me to ask —”

“It’s fine,” he interrupted, refusing to rehash a conversation he’d had with two of his three sisters, his dad, and his Aunt Mitzi. “It’s about a thousand times better than the old one.”

“It doesn’t even have FDA approval.”

“The FDA looks like a bunch of alchemists compared to the doctors I saw,” he said with as much finality in his tone as he could muster. “Look, did you find the  _pryaniki_ recipe?”

“Yes, and you’re welcome. I’m having the attic declared a HAZMAT zone for all the dust. Did you know Bubbe saved papers and crap from  _her_  bubbe?”

“And Mom’s saved every piece of kindergarten art, report card, and photo she’s ever taken. Are you surprised?”

“Point. I’ll get this emailed to you as soon as I translate it. The recipe’s in script.  _Russian_  script.”

Bucky hid a sigh. “Send along a scan, okay? I want to frame it and put it on the wall, give it some authenticity,” he said, too diplomatic to point out his sister’s translating skills left something to be desired.

“You got it. Anything else or should I let you get back to your zero customers?”

“Ha. Tell everyone I say hi.”

As soon as she said goodbye and hung up, he turned up the shop’s music and went back to stacking bags of coffee. Thank god he’d invested in a good vacuum sealer; he could still market the coffee as “fresh roasted” for another few days after the blizzard, assuming D.C. survived that long.

Which was ridiculous. The foot or two of snow that had accumulated throughout the day wouldn’t even warrant school closure back in New York. Here in D.C.? It was like the world was ending.

Not that he wasn’t shivering a little bit himself. Figuring he wouldn’t get any customers, he hadn’t bothered switching the thermostat to day mode, which might have been a mistake. Saving money on heat meant the shop was a cool sixty-eight, which was downright chilly after the three months he’d spent in Africa, getting his arm replaced.

So much for his grand opening. But at least he’d had an extra day to futz with all the little details that he’d rushed in the week he’d been back in the States. The contractors had done an okay job under the watchful eye of his assistant managers, but there had been delays. Mold behind in the walls, water damage in the back office, wiring that hadn’t been up to code in 1960 much less today...

Bucky put away the ladder and went to the middle of the store, taking a slow look around. The antique bookcases had been restored and polished to a warm golden glow, shelves crammed with chewed-up paperbacks for customers to browse or buy. One oversized table filled an alcove that had once been the bookstore’s back room, now fitted with generous electrical outlets and charging ports. The rest of the tables were cozy and small, spaced out enough for the shop to be wheelchair-friendly.

The bookstore Bucky remembered from his childhood was gone, but in its place was something new. Something he could be proud of. Something  _his_.

Satisfaction drove away the evening’s growing chill as he locked the front door and headed for the back. So what if opening day hadn’t gone as planned? With the snow predicted to last another three days and temperatures below freezing for the foreseeable future, he had that much more time to advertise. And tomorrow, maybe D.C. would get its shit together when it came to plowing and the Metro, so he’d ask some of his staff to come in. Nobody was out today, but anyone braving the weather tomorrow would need hot coffee and a refuge from the cold.

Or  _not_  nobody. A dark shadow appeared, turned to fractals by the beveled glass in the door that looked like antique wood but was actually veneer over steel. There was something plaintive about the way the maybe-customer knocked on the glass. The figure was either five-foot-nothing or hunched over in the cold, a skinny wisp of a creature bundled in a puffy down jacket.

How could Bucky deny his first customer, especially one so pathetic? He jogged up front and unlocked the door. As soon as he tugged it open, frigid air knifed into the shop, propelling the customer in with a flurry of snow and wheezing Bucky could hear even over the wind.

Wheezing? Not quite. It sounded more like... meowing?

Frowning, Bucky shoved the door closed and turned to his customer, who was still buried under the parka, hood falling down to cover half their face. Their arms were crossed low on their abdomen, under a suspicious bulge that looked like it was moving.

Definitely meowing _._

Absurdly, Bucky remembered all the memes he’d seen in passing about “people” who were actually seventeen ducks in a raincoat or something. His metal fist clenched, sparking the connection points where wires hooked up to his nerves, reminding him that this was real. There had to be a rational explanation for... whatever.

“Bucky...”

It came out choked, strained, like his customer —  _someone who knew him?_  — was gut-shot and dying. Old reflexes snapped to life, and Bucky rushed to them in horror, because what if what this person was holding so desperately was  _intestines?_  Fuck, Bucky had seen it too many times already.

“Easy,” Bucky said, though it came out more like an order. He forgot about personal space as he grabbed the down jacket and unzipped it as fast as he dared, aware that it might be the only thing keeping the customer’s innards in place.

Then two perky ears came into view, followed by immense blue eyes, surrounded by cloudy gray fur, and  _what the fuck?_  Bucky reeled back as two more kittens popped up, tiny pink noses twitching, letting out high-pitched meows.

“Take — them —” the customer grated out in a voice that had gone an octave lower than two seconds before. A soldier for almost ten years, Bucky was used to following orders, and training kicked in. He lunged for the kittens, catching them as they tried to climb their way to freedom. Two, three, four,  _five_  of them, digging needle-sharp claws into his shirt and trying to squirm away. He juggled them and tried to keep any from escaping, barely noticing as the down jacket hit the floor.

“You know this isn’t —”

Any thoughts of his customer confusing Kafe Biblioteka with a pet store flew out of his mind the second their eyes met. His heart damned near stopped at the sight of a man he hadn’t seen in person for a decade. A man who, as far as Bucky was aware, was supposed to be somewhere overseas, working for the State Department.

 _“Steve?”_  he whispered.

His heart skipped again as Steve staggered, thin body hunching over, almost convulsing. His inhale was ragged, like his lungs were seizing from the asthma that had almost killed him as a kid. But when he said, “Bucky!” it was an even deeper growl, lighting up the primal fear-centers in the back of Bucky’s head. Adrenaline slammed into his system, a split-second urge to dive for cover rushing through him.

He pushed it aside, because this was  _Steve Rogers_ , the last person on the planet who’d be a threat to anyone, much less his best friend. Bucky crouched and let the kittens spill out onto the floor, where they promptly scattered. He gave them one last thought, making sure he had a clear path and wouldn’t step on any of them, then rushed to Steve’s side.

He’d been wearing a suit under the parka, but even that was coming off, jacket tossed aside, tie pulled over his head, loose but still knotted. He fell to one knee, clawing at the button tight against his throat, and looked up at Bucky with eyes that the shop’s light tinged a strange yellow-green, rather than their usual sky blue.

“Fuck. Where’s your inhaler?” Bucky asked, dropping in front of Steve and grabbing for the jacket, figuring it was in one of the pockets.

“Not — I’m —  _I’m still me,_ ” Steve said, and it sounded like he was fighting to get every word out through clenched teeth. His cheeks were rosy from the cold, lips dry and chapped, but sweat was beading on his brow. His chest heaved as if he’d been running a marathon, not rescuing kittens, whatever the hell  _that_  was about.

“Yeah. Of course you are,” Bucky said as gently as he could through the fear bubbling up inside him. Steve’s health problems had always been physical. Asthma, anemia... hell, he was still wearing his hearing aids —

Or he had been. As soon as he tore through the top two buttons of his shirt, he swiped at his ears, throwing the hearing aids aside without a care for them cracking, even though he’d always been so damn careful with them.

Before Bucky could ask, Steve’s back arched the other way, straining so hard Bucky could hear his joints crack. His Adam’s apple stood out, framed by the tendons cording his throat. When his lips drew back in a snarl, Bucky could see gleaming white teeth, and he had the ridiculous thought that Steve must have had dental work, because his mom had never been able to afford braces.

But those teeth  _shifted_ , going sharp and long, and then there were too many of them, whiter-than-white against what might have passed for a beard if it had been blond instead of dark, and if Steve’s jaw hadn’t deformed to jut out, narrowing almost to a point inches beyond where his chin should have been.

Steve flailed, and Bucky recoiled from a hand with too-long fingers covered in that same dark coat. White shirt cuffs popped before the sleeves gave way, fabric tearing to reveal bunched muscles and thick gray-brown fur.

Bucky’s back hit the iron coat rack; the weighted base kept it from falling over and cracking open his skull, maybe. Or maybe he was lying on the floor of his shop, bleeding out from a head wound that had him hallucinating, because what stood up from the remnants of Steve’s clothes wasn’t Steve. It wasn’t human.

It was  _impossible_.


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky stared at the werewolf that had been his closest friend.

The werewolf stared back, mouth open to show inch-long fangs, tongue hanging out like a dog panting on a hot summer day.

Bucky stared and braced himself for attack and tried to reconcile what he was seeing with reality, but it didn’t add up.

He probably needed to call Shuri, the genius behind his new prosthetic, but what could he say? _Washington D.C.’s turned into a movie dystopia because it’s actually snowing, and my only customer is my childhood best friend who brought me a coat-load of kittens, then turned into a werewolf._

Just thinking it, he could hear her laughter all the way across the Atlantic.

Besides, she’d warned him there’d be side-effects. Granted, she’d listed phantom pain, occasional spasms as the processors mis-translated his neural impulses and his brain learned to control the micro-electronics, and nothing about hallucinations. Maybe that was his PTSD having a bad interaction with his meds and the chip Shuri had casually wired into the top of his spinal column, as if she did that sort of thing every day.

(She did, actually. She was so off-the-charts brilliant, her prosthetic design and neural interface had been barely a hobby project. But maybe she’d just never worked on someone as fucked-up as him before and something had gone wrong.)

 _Get up,_ he told himself, so he did, though it took a couple of tries to get his balance sorted. Through it all, the werewolf just watched him, head hunched low, gold eyes somehow sad despite the inherent threat in those claws and fangs.

Bucky swallowed. Licked dry lips. Somewhere under the hallucination was a customer who was probably still wearing clothes, not standing in a pile of rags. A very realistic pile of rags that included dress shoes shredded by two-inch-long toe-claws and white briefs split down both sides, fraying elastic curled along the waistband.

“What can I get you?” he asked. Croaked, really, but at least he got _something_ out, polite and business-like. Nearly professional.

The werewolf’s shoulders slumped even more. Its sigh was comfortingly human but not enough to help Bucky break through the hallucination to reality.

“Bucky,” it said — at least, that was what Bucky _thought_ it said. The word was unsurprisingly mangled, considering the shape of its jaw.

A tiny corner of his mind was impressed at the quality of his hallucination. The thing even _smelled_ different, with a hint of wet fur instead of soap or cologne or whatever the actual human underneath smelled like.

And that reminded him of his therapist’s trick for grounding. He looked away from the impossible werewolf and deliberately took note of the nearest bookshelf, the recessed light fixture overhead, the curved back of the nearest chair, the knots in the wood floor, the glint of light reflected from the empty pastry case. He could hear the hiss of the heating system battling the chill he’d let inside when he’d opened the door, the wind rushing outside, his own breath coming harsh and too fast. He struggled to find a fourth thing — that was the pattern, counting down from five things he could see, four things he could hear, and so on — but the snow had buried the city in an unnatural hush. Skipping ahead, he clenched both hands, feeling his sweaty right palm and the neural impulses from metal-against-metal. With his next breath, he felt his shirt slide over his skin. His belt and jeans pressed into his abdomen. He shifted his weight, letting the solidity of the floor underfoot help ground him. The shop’s air smelled overwhelmingly of coffee, of sawdust, of old books, and —

Wet dog.

He lost the thread of the mental exercise and headed for the counter with admirably steady footsteps. He didn’t know if the kittens were a part of the hallucination, but he kept one eye out for them anyway. Real or not, the last thing he wanted was to hurt an innocent kitten.

“Coffee?” he offered his customer, activating the grinder without waiting for a response. He’d do a pour-over for practice and because he didn’t want to brew a full twenty cups.

The _click-click-click_ confused him until a shadow passed into his line-of-sight. The werewolf had crossed the floor, barefoot of course, and was now standing across the pastry counter from him. “Bucky, it’s —” The werewolf cut off with a whine, lip curling as it licked its tongue against the roof of its mouth. “It’s Steve,” it said more slowly, this time with a lisp, as if it had bitten its tongue.

Which made sense. That jaw wasn’t meant for speaking — not English, anyway.

“Uh huh,” Bucky said, fighting to see Steve somewhere under there, but no luck.

Except... there was _almost_ a resemblance. Standing a bit straighter now, the werewolf was about five foot five, which seemed awfully short for a horror-movie monster. And while it was muscular, it was more lean than beefy, at least what Bucky could see of it over the pastry display. The fur on its hands, resting against the glass, was sparse in patches right over the knuckles, where Steve had scars from too many schoolyard fights.

A flutter of anxiety hit low in Bucky’s gut. He leaned forward, looking down the werewolf’s slender body to the spot where Steve had a two-inch scar from his appendectomy.

There it was, a bare patch almost lost under the thick layers of fur, visible only because Bucky knew what to look for.

“Steve,” he whispered, and a twitch made him look up to see the werewolf’s ears prick forward.

“Huh?”

So much for super-hearing. Bucky faced the werewolf square-on and raised his voice the way he’d always done when Steve took out his hearing aids to give his ears a break. “Steve.”

The werewolf’s lower jaw dropped, lips drawing back in a grin more suited to a golden retriever than a runty monster. “Yeah,” he said with a quick nod, sounding so happy that it took all of Bucky’s self-control to not check to see if his best friend had a tail and, if so, if it was wagging.

There was a scar back there, too, from when Steve sat on a nail and it got infected. Just like with the appendectomy, Bucky knew _precisely_ where that scar was and how it made a false dimple in Steve’s ass. He’d thought a few too many times about how it’d feel to touch that scar, contrasting it with the smooth skin he’d seen every time they’d changed for swimming class.

It took an act of will to turn away and get the pour-over started. He could’ve gone fancy, using the long-necked kettle and pouring in a precise manual swirl pattern, but that sort of artistry was why he’d hired experienced baristas. He just dumped the ground coffee into the filter cone, poured on the hot water, and turned back to his best friend.

“So,” he said, staring into those strange gold eyes. “You’re a werewolf.”

Steve’s shrug was thick with embarrassment. “Yeah?” Ridiculously, it came out a question.

Bucky couldn’t help but laugh. “If you’re not a werewolf, you’ve got even worse problems, pal.”

Apparently werewolves couldn’t laugh, because it sounded like Steve was coughing up a hairball. Bucky had to turn away to hide his grin; Steve was always oversensitive to being teased.

The hacking stopped by the time Bucky had the coffee in the biggest ceramic mug he had. It was meant to be for display only, but claws would shred paper, and he suspected a normal mug would get lost in those huge paws.

He didn’t bother ringing up the sale or even passing the mug over the counter. He carried it around himself and let him see, for the first time, what his childhood friend had become. From toes to ear-tips, he was covered in fur, except maybe under the one hand Steve was trying to casually use to cover the fact that he’d lost his pants. And yep, there was a tail back there, waving lazily from side to side.

“Do you want to...” He gestured at the nearest table before the tail fully registered. _Could_ Steve sit? Did he need a bench?

Knowing Steve, he’d probably try and end up fracturing his tail, and then what would happen? Bucky couldn’t exactly take him to the emergency room for a cast — or a vet’s office, for that matter.

But a decade in the field had taught Bucky to think on his feet. He put down the mug and turned one of the chairs around. Steve’s jaw dropped again — a smile, Bucky figured — and he straddled the chair a little clumsily before wrapping his paws around the curved sides of the mug.

 _Shit_. Could he even drink it? Would he end up spilling half of it down his front? Or would he have to lap it up like a dog, which could get awkward? Messy at best, embarrassing at worst.

Bucky had watched hours of online customer service training and had even hired a lawyer to go over the business’ policies on everything from disability access to sexual harassment. No one had ever even _considered_ the possibility of a werewolf customer. A naked, furry werewolf customer.

“I’m gonna...” He gestured to the front windows and went to close the blinds. Just because the streets were practically deserted didn’t mean zero possibility of anyone walking by. Even with the shop’s lights cozily dimmed, it still looked like there was a werewolf — or at least a person in a really, _really_ good werewolf costume — sitting at a table. Neither of them needed that sort of attention.

After closing the blinds, he locked the door and turned off the front lights, just to make it absolutely clear that the shop was closed. The rattle of the blinds coaxed two kittens out from wherever they were hiding, and Bucky bent down to scoop them up. He brought them back to the table and sat down. As soon as they climbed out of his hands, Steve got a goofy (doggie) grin and turned his fingers into a protective cage to keep the curious kittens out of the mug.

Of the thousand or so questions Bucky had, he started with what he figured was the easiest. “What’s with the kittens?”

“I found them.” Steve was still speaking carefully, but it was a little easier to understand. Maybe he hadn’t been a werewolf all that long?

Selfishly, Bucky hoped that was the case. Steve _had_ to know that he could tell Bucky anything, even this.

“And brought them —” Bucky shook his head, rescuing a kitten that was thinking about jumping off the table. He set it on his lap instead, earning himself a half-dozen pinprick wounds in one thigh before the kitten leaped down like a first-timer doing a HALO jump. “Aren’t you supposed to be overseas somewhere?”

“Russia,” Steve said, lisping again. “I got bit there a couple weeks back.”

“You got bit by a Russian werewolf.” Ridiculously, Bucky almost asked if there even was such a thing as a Russian werewolf, when obviously there was.

Maybe he should’ve gone for the liquor license after all. Because he needed a drink to deal with this — something stronger than coffee.

Apparently Steve saw the absurdity in the whole thing. He huffed out another hairball-laugh and shrugged. “Yeah. So I had to quit my job,” he added, smile fading.

Bucky didn’t stop to think about claws or fangs. He just slid his flesh-and-blood hand across the table to touch the back of Steve’s hand, pressing through the fur to the hot skin beneath. “I’m sorry. I know you loved that job.”

Steve ducked his head, ears flattening back so evasively that even Bucky, who hadn’t had a dog for twenty years, could read his guilt.

Bucky tapped Steve’s hand until he got eye contact, then asked, “You _didn’t_ love it?”

When Steve sighed, his nostrils flared. “It was all putting paper,” he said, which confused Bucky until he realized Steve had said _pushing_.

Ten years ago, Bucky would’ve given Steve a morale-boosting speech about there being more ways to be a patriot than following in his dad’s footsteps and joining the army. Hell, Bucky had been riddled with guilt when he’d enlisted without Steve, but he’d needed the GI Bill. No way could his parents afford to send all four kids to college without taking out second mortgages on their house and the bookshop Dad had inherited from his brother — the shop that Bucky had eventually bought, after the army turned into a career with an abrupt, bloody ending.

But ten years had given Bucky a very realistic view of the world and America’s bloody role in shaping international politics. Maybe instead of shooting people, Steve had had an easier time of things in the State Department, helping with lost passports or getting travelers out of sticky legal situations, but surely reality had come crashing down at some point.

Reality.

 _He’s a werewolf,_ Bucky thought, turning his slightly desperate laugh into a cough muffled with his metal hand.

Steve’s eyes tracked the movement, and he cocked his head to one side, threatening to make Bucky laugh all over again. “Is that from Wakanda?” Steve asked, blissfully unaware of the dog jokes filling Bucky’s head.

“Yeah.” He extended his metal arm and used his free hand to corral the kitten currently violating health department regulations by existing on the table.

Steve let go of the mug and reached but didn’t touch until Bucky nodded. Then he gingerly prodded at the plates with one fingertip, bent awkwardly to keep his long, curved claw from touching. “Is it —” He took a deep breath that sounded better than it had at first. No wheezing. “Does it hurt?” he asked, meeting Bucky’s eyes.

“No.” Bucky put all the reassurance he could muster into his smile. It _had_ hurt, and not just when the explosion had ripped through him. He refused to think about those six months between the desert and when he’d finally gone to the Stark Institute to have neuro-blockers implanted as the first step to his old prosthesis.

“Good.” Steve’s jaw dropped, and his gold predator’s eyes seemed to soften.

Bucky pressed into the touch, marveling at how the sensors embedded through the metal plates registered the heat of Steve’s fingertip and the blood thrumming in tiny capillaries beneath. “What about you? You said you got bit...”

Steve hunched guiltily, ears flattening once more. “I got mugged,” he said, or so Bucky guessed, since “mubbed” wasn’t a word. He flicked his gaze up and said, as if in self-defense, “He didn’t have a gun. Not even a knife.”

“So let me guess,” Bucky said, though he didn’t have to guess. Oh, no. He could see it all now in his head. Steve was the type of person to capture spiders in a cup and release them outside rather than stomping them (which was just proof Steve had never been to the desert, where the spiders would kill anything that came within reach just for fun). He was also just the type of guy who’d answer an attempted mugging by throwing a punch, even if the mugger was twice his size — or, apparently in this case, a werewolf. “He didn’t need a gun because he had fangs.”

“It wasn’t like I could’ve known!”

And there he was, furry or not: Steve Rogers, ridiculous and amazing in equal measure. Bucky’s smile was the one reserved solely for the tiny whirlwind of righteous rage that was his best friend, full of fondness and affection that he kept in careful check.

“What am I gonna do with you?” he asked just as he’d been asking for thirty years, since he’d first galloped to Steve’s rescue in the elementary school playground at recess.

Another sigh, this time as Steve sat back, pulling away from Bucky’s hand — Bucky told himself he _did not_ miss that touch. And really, that had been a pointless question. Steve was naked except for his fur, in the heart of Washington D.C., and apparently the proud new dad of a whole batch of kittens. If the cops didn’t shoot Steve on sight, the government would catch him and send him to USAMRIID for dissection. Or worse, Stark Industries would get hold of him, and as well-intentioned as they seemed to be since their CEO’s change of heart a few years back, they’d think it their duty to keep a werewolf in their lab forever.

“That was a rhetorical question,” Bucky said before Steve could do something nobly self-sacrificing, like walking away to keep Bucky from getting even more tangled up in this mess than he already was.

Steve looked up. “Huh?”

“Rhetorical,” Bucky repeated, getting to his feet with some care. A kitten was attacking his shoelaces, so he bent down to retrieve it, then looked back at Steve. “The kittens aren’t scared of you, even with fangs?”

“Don’t think so.” Steve rose and reached out carefully, and the kitten seemed more than content to hug one furry finger and gnaw on it with tiny needle-fangs.

“Good. Help me catch them, then come upstairs.”

“Huh?” Steve repeated, though he’d been watching and listening, so he’d understood the words. He was just too stubborn and self-sacrificing to catch the meaning behind them.

“My apartment. You’re staying.”

“Bucky —”

Logic had never won any fights against Steve, especially when it came to Steve’s idea of Doing The Right Thing, so Bucky went straight for the knockout punch. “You have no pants.”

The way Steve looked down so sharply that his ears actually flopped was both absurd and adorable. The hand not holding the kitten shot down, covering the lighter fur down between his oddly-jointed legs. Werewolves couldn’t blush — at least not visibly — but it was probably there under all that fur.

Bucky couldn’t resist sliding his hand — the real one, this time — under Steve’s jaw. The fur there was incredibly soft, almost like down, and a shiver went through Steve’s whole body as Bucky gently lifted his head until their eyes met.

“You’re staying,” he repeated, somehow resisting the urge to pet Steve’s fur, though he couldn’t make himself let go. Not yet. Not until he knew Steve wouldn’t try to run.

It took a few long seconds for Bucky’s tone of voice and stern glare to penetrate Steve’s thick, stubborn skull. But then he surrendered with a sigh and a flicker of ears, pressing his jaw into Bucky’s hand when he nodded. “Okay.”

 _Good boy_ was on the tip of Bucky’s tongue, and he had to pull his hand away before he could ruffle the fur between Steve’s ears. As it was, he grinned foolishly and said, “Now go get the kittens.”

And he gave himself points for not once using the word _fetch_.


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky’s PTSD came with a heaping dose of hypervigilance, so when he’d bought the building from his dad, he’d also bought out the tenants’ leases. He’d moved into the second floor apartment, but the rest of the building was empty, scrubbed out by the cleaning crew a few months back and otherwise untouched. In the rush to get the shop ready — and considering he’d spent so long in the health center in Wakanda — he’d arranged for minimal living quarters, figuring he’d take care of the details later.

None of which had occurred to him until he cradled three kittens to his chest with one hand, unlocked the apartment door with the other, and ushered the werewolf and two more kittens inside.

Steve scuttled past, still keeping one hand modestly low, and gave the air a quick sniff, either by instinct or because Bucky had left out his laundry. Maybe both. Bucky had been living on take-out, so he had no idea what was growing in his fridge, and his furniture consisted of a table and chair deemed too rickety for use in the coffee shop and a memory foam mattress he’d bought off the internet. He didn’t even have a throw rug, much less a sofa.

First things first. He closed the door before releasing his kittens. The tattered remnants of Steve’s clothes went on the table, along with the hearing aids Bucky had carefully tucked into his pocket. There was something wary about the way Steve was looking around — unlike the kittens, who seemed fearless in their desire to explore — so Bucky walked over and touched his arm to get his attention.

“Think you can use those claws to shred some paper for a litter box?”  Since the building was zoned for commercial and residential use, Bucky had contracted with a hauling service to deal with trash and recycling. That left him with a cardboard box full of smaller boxes, flattened down, and a ton of junk mail and circulars.

Steve’s ears flickered and his tail lashed, almost cat-like. “Yeah. They need food, too.”

“Shit. Yeah, okay.” Bucky got Steve started on the shredding, then sat down with his iPad to figure out what to feed the kittens.

For a good ten minutes, the only sound was pop-hiss of Steve’s claws through paper; slow at first, then faster as he grew more confident. Bucky had to stop his research a couple of times to wrangle the kittens to compare them to the pictures online, estimating their age. They had plenty of teeth but seemed small, so he guessed they were maybe six weeks old, which meant he’d need to take them to a veterinarian ASAP.

Of course, ASAP didn’t mean shit if they all froze to death or got into a car wreck — assuming Bucky’s PTSD even let him get into a car with someone else driving. When he’d been released from the hospital, he’d pulled his motorcycle out of storage, figuring it was a hell of a lot easier to park a Harley than a car. He wasn’t going to risk his own neck riding his bike in this weather, much less the kittens’.

Time for plan B.

He felt more than a little horrible placing a delivery order in this weather, but adding a hundred-percent tip would ease some of that guilt. Plus he could get everything he needed in one trip: litter boxes and litter (one for each kitten was apparently the rule), a half-dozen cans of kitten milk, tins of high-protein wet kitten food, even cat beds, since it wasn’t fair to inflict his bachelor lifestyle on innocent kittens.

He was looking at cat toys — balls with bells, mice with catnip, and more — when a hiccuping sort of growl startled him out of his shopping spree. Apparently that was a werewolf’s version of clearing the throat, because Steve was standing next to him, box of shredded paper in one hand, the other preserving his furry modesty.

“Shit. Thanks. I should...” Bucky tried to be subtle about looking at Steve’s legs, but there was no way not to stare. They were jointed more like a dog’s hind legs, entirely wrong for wearing human-style pants, and that wasn’t even factoring in the tail. “Do you want a towel to wrap around...?”

Steve’s “yeah” was a little sad, full of embarrassment.

Which, now that Bucky was past the initial shock, was entirely unwarranted. Because while Steve had always been the sort of adorable-and-hot that was like catnip to Bucky, werewolf-Steve was... well, _magnificent_. He was lithe and powerful, with subtleties to his fur that had been muted in the dim light downstairs.

Bucky had to force himself to stop staring and get one of the bath sheets from the bathroom. Steve was still standing there, makeshift litter box in hand, looking like — well, like a lost puppy. Bucky took the litter box away, set it on the floor, and offered Steve the towel.

“Thanks.” Steve winced as if he’d bit his tongue again. He took the towel and let it fall in front of his body before moving his other hand.

Figuring it would take a couple of tries for Steve to get “dressed,” Bucky went back to his iPad. He picked toys at random, resisted the urge to make some poor driver schlep a cat tree through the snow, and placed his order, double-checking that the tip was sufficiently generous. Apparently he wasn’t the only one belatedly laying in supplies for the blizzard; the earliest delivery window he could get was between ten and noon tomorrow.

For now, he figured giving the kittens tuna was less evil than making them starve. He used a bread knife to saw down a bunch of paper cup samples from distributors hoping to do business with Kafe Biblioteka, filled half of them with water, and spooned tuna into the rest. After laying them out in a neat line against the wall, he got busy tracking down kittens. Steve gave up trying to fasten the towel, instead holding it in place with one hand, and came to help. Eventually they got five ferociously purring kittens aware of the litter box location (though whether they’d use it or not was another matter) and eating their tuna.

Watching the kittens felt strangely domestic, even if the best friend next to him was a werewolf. He stood there, enjoying the _rightness_ of it for a few minutes, before his stomach rumbled, reminding him the kittens weren’t the only ones who were hungry.

He touched Steve’s arm and gave a little tug, turning him back to the table. “Sit down,” he said, flipping the chair around to accommodate Steve’s tail. “Let me see what I’ve got in the fridge.”

“Bucky —”

“It’s fine.” He pointed to the chair and went to the fridge, inventorying the take-out boxes. Maybe it was trite to make assumptions about werewolves being carnivores, but Bucky skipped the fried rice and lo mein and instead took out the pepperoni and sausage pizza. He even splurged and went for the toaster oven instead of the microwave to reheat four slices.

Steve hadn’t done more than warm his hands with the coffee cup that was still on the table downstairs. Bucky didn’t have any mugs, large or small — his kitchen was strictly paper and plastic for the moment — so he got a couple of beers out of the fridge, popped the tops, and brought them to the table. If nothing else, maybe Steve could just pour it down his throat.

While the toaster oven ticked away, Bucky turned back to look at the werewolf at his kitchen table. And wasn’t _that_ a ridiculous sight (and, yes, an adorable one). Steve had the towel bunched up over his tail, with both ends covering his crotch. He seemed more comfortable than he’d been downstairs, but there was still something unsettled about the way he was twitching.

Almost how he’d been when he’d first staggered into the shop.

Curious now, Bucky went back to his iPad and opened a browser. Searching “moon phase tonight” didn’t get him any immediate answers, but a couple of links down, he found a table of times for moonrise, moonset, as well as percentage full. Sure enough, tonight was listed at ninety-nine percent, with a moonrise time right about when Steve had knocked on the door. Moonset wasn’t until early tomorrow morning.

“Steve.” Bucky walked over to lean against the table, waiting until Steve looked directly at him. Up until now, he’d been trying not to make Steve do too much talking, but this could be important. “You couldn’t stop changing into” — he gestured at Steve’s body a little indistinctly — “this form, right?”

Steve shrunk down, more like a furry turtle than a werewolf. “I tried,” he said. Whined, really, like a dog pleading for table scraps.

Bucky put down the iPad and crouched down next to Steve, putting his hand on Steve’s arm. He didn’t even realize it was his metal hand until the sensors roared to life with heat and softness, hard muscle and rushing blood. Steve’s heart had always worked too hard for its own good, but now it was racing like a thoroughbred’s, strong and fast.

Maybe, despite not fixing his hearing, this werewolf thing wasn’t entirely a curse after all?

“It’s okay,” Bucky said when Steve turned to him again. “Doesn’t matter if you’re furry. You’re still my best friend, right?”

Steve’s jaw dropped a bit. “Thanks, Buck.”

Cheeks heating with pleasure, Bucky nodded. “You said you got mugged a couple weeks back. Is this the first time you’ve shifted?”

After a moment, Steve nodded. “Mostly, yeah. I can...” He lifted his hand just enough to draw Bucky’s attention, not enough to move away from the touch, and curled his fingers to show off his wicked-sharp claws. “When the cops didn’t believe I got attacked, these” — another flex of the claws — “almost came out,” he said, slowly and carefully.

“Okay.” Bucky smoothed down Steve’s fur, sending thrills up his neural network at the softness. He needed to stop petting his best friend immediately. Right now. Just as soon as he got Steve to relax a little. “So I’m guessing if the guy who attacked you bit you around the new moon, and then you got claws right after —”

“Almost.”

Bucky nodded. “— _almost_ got claws. You probably _can_ shift any time you want, but you _have to_ shift during the full moon.”

Steve sighed and looked away for a few seconds. “That’s what I think. I _wanted_ to shift last night, but held it off. But still...”

“You had to shift.” When Steve nodded, Bucky said, “And that’s why you quit your job.”

Steve flinched again, ears going flat. “Walked out. No notice. I thought... I thought I could control it better here.”

Bucky couldn’t hide his frown. “Here, in America?” That sounded ridiculous — that maybe a Russian werewolf’s bite would lose its effect being halfway around the world — but then again this whole situation was unbelievable.

But instead of laughing, Steve ducked even lower, mumbling something that sounded like “you.”

“Huh?” Bucky squeezed Steve’s arm and tried to make eye-contact.

Steve sighed, his whole body seeming to shrink in on itself with embarrassment. “Closer to you.”

 _Oh_. Bucky didn’t hesitate to stand up just enough to wrap his arm around Steve’s shoulders and give him a hug. Steve’s whole body shivered again, and Bucky nearly thought he was going to pull away. But then he turned, muzzle bumping into Bucky’s chest, and leaned close, a heavy warmth that soothed the last of Bucky’s worries.

So what if Steve was a werewolf? So what if he’d apparently abandoned his post in Russia (or more likely got himself thrown out of the country for pissing off the local cops) and then walked out on the State Department?

He was still Steve Rogers, Bucky’s dearest friend. And while having a werewolf in his apartment wasn’t the “more” he’d wanted from Steve, he’d take anything he could get, even if it was wrapped in fur.


	4. Chapter 4

Two slices of pizza and a beer seemed to go a long way towards helping Steve get over his furry condition. That or werewolf-Steve had no more resistance to alcohol than human-Steve did, because he was finally talking freely despite the risk of biting his tongue.

“It was okay, but not what I was hoping for, you know?” he said, slouching comfortably against the back of the chair, hands hanging down over what Bucky thought might be his knees, though it was hard to tell without a canine anatomy chart.

“Less James Bond, more Department of Motor Vehicles?” Bucky guessed, slouched much less against the kitchen cupboards, though he’d padded the floor with a spare pillow.

“If I ever see another form DS-64...” Steve deliberately bared his teeth and snarled. It came out pretty damn ferocious, all things considered, and he blinked and recoiled as if he’d startled himself.

Bucky just grinned, no longer fazed by Steve’s condition. “That means you’re unemployed, doesn’t it?”

Steve’s snarl turned into a doggie-style pout, complete with huge eyes like pools of liquid gold and drooping ears.

“Hey. No, I mean, that’s...” Bucky pushed away from the cabinets and reached for Steve’s arm, ending up on one knee, like he was about to propose. He shook his head, banishing the image, and said, “I’ve been freaking out, trying to find a manager I can trust.”

Steve’s jaw dropped, though his ears stayed flat — shock, then, and not a grin. “But... I’m a _werewolf_.”

Bucky shrugged, deliberately holding up his left arm. A clench of his fist made the forearm plates shift, though not nearly as dramatically as they’d done on the Stark Industries model. “So? I’m a cyborg.”

Back in the old days, Steve’s baffled blinks had never failed to captivate Bucky. They’d lost none of their enchantment now that his eyes were gold and his face furry. “But...” he repeated, this time without adding anything else.

“You’re still Steve Rogers. _My_ Steve Rogers,” Bucky said, giving voice, however briefly, to the possessive side that had always put Steve before anyone else. He’d spent his bar mitzvah hiding in the nightclub’s coat room with Steve, leaving his other friends to dance and stuff their faces with dessert. Prom night had started out on a double date and ended with Bucky ditching his girl to play video games with Steve after Steve’s date ditched him. So it had been from that very first day on the playground. Bucky couldn’t imagine it any other way.

Slowly, Steve’s ears came up, and a hint of life returned to his eyes. “Thanks,” he said in a soft rumble.

Bucky indulged in one last touch, running his hand down from Steve’s shoulder to his elbow. “Good.” He got to his feet, rolling his shoulders to crack his back. Advanced as Shuri’s prosthetic design was, his body was still getting used to the weight. Unable to tolerate the thought of being touched by strangers, he’d refused to see a massage therapist and instead took hot showers twice a day.

Now, though, all he wanted was sleep. He’d been awakened at four thirty by the pastry delivery company saying they wouldn’t be there for opening day after all, and bed was calling to him, especially now that he knew Steve was safe and here with him, in his space.

So he picked up his pillow and held out his hand, saying, “Come on.”

“What?” Steve wrapped his long fingers around Bucky’s hand, claws barely touching skin. Bucky pulled with more effort than he’d expected. Werewolf Steve was all of five and a half feet tall but had to be a solid one-eighty, maybe even two hundred pounds. Where had the extra mass come from? That broke the laws of physics —

Laws of physics? He was a _werewolf_. He threw the whole rulebook out the window.

Bucky should definitely call Shuri to talk about this. Wakanda had been filled with hushed rumors that “Black Panther” was more than just a title for her brother, the king. If anyone on the planet would have answers, she would.

But all that could wait. Steve was here and no one was shooting at them and they were both safe and protected from the blizzard.

“I was up at four thirty this morning, and you’re probably still jetlagged all to hell,” Bucky said, reluctantly letting go of Steve’s hand so Steve could futz with the towel around his waist. “It’s past our bedtime.”

Steve’s ears went flat, and he looked over at the corner of the empty living room where a couch would one day be. For now, the temporary litter box was there, along with a half-full basket of Bucky’s dirty laundry. They’d piled the sleeping kittens inside on the theory that the laundry would keep them warm and smell a little familiar, and hopefully they wouldn’t pee where they slept.

“I — I can —”

“You’re not sleeping on the floor,” Bucky interrupted, stepping into Steve’s line-of-sight to make damn sure he was understood.

“Bucky,” Steve whined, tilting his head, and it was all Bucky could do to keep himself from grabbing hold of Steve’s fur and ruffling it. God, he was just too cute for words.

“I’m betting that fighting off the shift took a lot out of you,” Bucky guessed. “And actually shifting was probably even more stressful. Am I right?”

Steve’s evasive shrug was all the confirmation he needed.

“Uh huh.” Bucky pointed in the direction of the bedroom. “You can have the bed to yourself if you want. I can go sleep downstairs in one of the armchairs.” His back would hate him for days, but he’d do it, if it meant Steve got a good night’s sleep.

There was a certain stubbornness that Bucky recognized even with Steve in his fur. The words came out clipped as Steve growled, “I’m not kicking you out of your bed.”

“Then we can share,” Bucky said with a casual shrug, praying that Steve’s werewolf senses — which seemed pretty baseline human, actually — didn’t pick up on how his heart started to race. “Not like we didn’t share a bed half the time growing up.”

Steve couldn’t argue that. Once Bucky’s parents had found out Steve lived a latchkey lifestyle whenever his mom took double shifts at the hospital, they’d all but adopted him. When Viola had been born, Bucky had moved into the attic and his parents had bought him a double bed, virtually filling all livable space under the eaves, just so there was room for him and Steve.

“Yeah, but I wasn’t a werewolf then.”

Okay, maybe Steve _could_ argue. He could be exasperatingly stubborn sometimes.

“So?” Bucky shot back, squaring off to face Steve. He wasn’t letting Steve wriggle out of this under the pretext of a misunderstanding. “Just means you won’t steal the blankets. You’ve got your own.”

“And I have these.” Steve lifted his hand, claws spread, points aimed right at Bucky’s face.

Bucky had never been intimidated by Steve. The addition of sixty pounds and claws sure as hell wasn’t going to do it. He just held up his metal arm and flicked his finger against one of those claws. It made a surprisingly cheerful _ting_.

Steve held his ground for almost ten whole seconds before he sighed and went back to death-gripping the towel around his waist. “I just don’t want to hurt you.”

“You wouldn’t,” Bucky said without a moment’s hesitation. Figuring it was a done deal, he asked, “You want the bathroom first?”

“Uh.” Steve nodded shyly. “Maybe if you’ve got a washcloth I can use? If I shower... I mean, wet dog.”

 _Thank god I’m not the only one thinking it._ Bucky bit his cheek to keep from laughing and just nodded, treating it as no big deal. “Cupboard under the sink.” He gave Steve a little push towards the bathroom and headed into the bedroom, listening as Steve closed the door.

Then he turned and went back to the kitchen table to rifle through the clothing scraps, remembering that Steve usually liked having his hearing aids close by when he woke up. The hearing aids were smaller than the last set Bucky had seen, with no power switch, which meant Steve would need spare batteries. He dug through the remnants of Steve’s clothes some more and found Steve’s wallet, an inhaler, his dad’s Army keychain with three keys (one of them to Bucky’s family home in Brooklyn), and what looked like a portable battery charger, but no cell phone or music player to go with it. And the charger had two curved divots that looked like they’d fit the hearing aids perfectly.

Huh. Maybe they’d solved the rechargeable battery problem after all. Good to know, since Bucky had forgotten to ask if Steve needed batteries added to the delivery order for tomorrow.

He grabbed his iPad and went to the bedroom, where he divvied up the pillows and made some effort at kicking the rest of his dirty laundry into the closet, adding what he was wearing to the pile, though he stopped at his boxers, thumbs hooked into the waistband.

On or off? After years of sleeping half-dressed or fully-dressed, right down to his body armor and boots, he’d started challenging himself to adopt more civilian ways. And since he’d never been one for pajamas — they just made for extra laundry — that meant sleeping in the buff.

But Steve had been leery about sharing a bed at all. Was it really because he thought his claws were a threat or was there something more to it?

None of this was turning out the way Bucky had expected their reunion to go. Sure, he had no reason to imagine one of those dramatic airport running-through-the-terminal-towards-each-other scenes, but at the very least he’d figured there’d be a hug. Maybe more.

Instead, he’d gotten a werewolf with a coat full of kittens.

So he left his underwear on and sprawled under his blankets, letting his body heat drive the chill from the mattress while he checked his email. Delivery cancellation notices from two suppliers and the waste management company for tomorrow, a message from the college student he’d hired to handle social media — another thing Steve could possibly do, since he was a genius when it came to art — and the translated pryaniki recipe from Rebecca. She’d attached a scan of the original handwritten card and a selfie that must have been shot by their dad, because instead of showing actual people it had half of Dad’s face, part of Rebecca’s hand out of focus, and the dining room wall.

A scratch at the doorjamb made him look up in time for Steve to peek in. “Do you, uh, have a toothbrush?” he asked, muzzle dark from water. “I tried the trick using my finger —”

“Oh god, not with those claws.” Bucky abandoned his email and fought free of the blankets, forgetting all about looking Steve’s way as he said, “I think there was one more in the pack.”

Steve drew in a sharp breath, practically a gasp, making Bucky look back in alarm. Steve’s ears were perked alertly, nostrils flared. Only the thinnest ring of gold showed around his black pupils, making his eyes look dark, almost dangerous, but this was _Steve_.

“You okay?” Bucky asked, absolutely unafraid of the werewolf and too tired to figure it out. Without a shot of adrenaline to wake him up, he was crashing hard and fast.

“Yeah.” Steve exhaled sharply and shook his head, scattering water droplets from his muzzle.

Thank god he closed his eyes, because there was no way for Bucky to hide his grin. Instead, he ducked into the bathroom and found the last toothbrush in the pack under the sink. He took it out and offered it to Steve, flinging the cardboard packaging at the now-empty box of recycling.

“Need anything else?”

“Thanks. No. Just a couple more minutes.” Steve slinked past Bucky, clutching the towel that was still around his waist like a lifeline, and went for the sink.

Shivering, Bucky made one last check on the kittens and flicked the light switch in the main room. Then he dove back under the covers, trying to warm up before it was his turn in the bathroom.


	5. Chapter 5

“Jesus fucking _shit_.”

The mutter was garbled and heartfelt and _not_ from any of Bucky’s squadmates, which snapped him from zero to sixty on a surge of adrenaline. Blinking got him a closeup of blonde hair and white sheets.

Then _cold_ hit his shins as someone jerked the blankets almost completely off, but the ice was from feet, not the frigid air slithering up his spine. Instinctively he tightened his grasp on _someone_ , needing like two seconds for his brain to catch up with whatever the fuck was going on and whoever the fuck he was sleeping with.

And what the _hell_ stabbed him in the scalp, making him flinch down and try to look up, getting himself a mouthful of hair and nearly losing an eye to a ball of orange and white fluff that was determinedly trying to chew on its own foot. On Bucky’s pillow.

“What the fuck?” he croaked, splaying both hands on a flat chest with prominent ribs and cold skin.

“Bucky.”

He knew that plaintive whine. _“Steve?”_ he all but yelped, telling his heart to stop screaming at him to take cover and find a weapon and generally be on high alert.

As soon as he moved, the kitten on the pillow rolled to a stop against his head, where it started licking his hair. And since he hadn’t had a haircut since his pre-hospital days, the kitten lost that battle before it even began.

But that was enough to remind him of last night. Steve showing up out of nowhere. Dumping kittens all over his shop floor. _Turning into a fucking werewolf._

“Steve.” He let out a sigh and pulled Steve close, caught up in relief and the joy bubbling up in his chest that Steve was _here_.

“Too fucking cold,” Steve complained, trying to burrow under Bucky. Every inch of him was like ice, and Bucky did his best to wrap Steve up in blankets, even throwing one leg over Steve’s to try and maximize body warmth.

Slowly, the chill turned to heat and the kitten settled down into a rattling purr like a coffee grinder on low speed. Bucky might have dozed, or maybe he just lay there thinking he was dreaming, warm and safe and so very not alone. But his metal hand was pressed over Steve’s chest, sensors lighting up with every heartbeat, and he slowly, carefully inched his hips back before his body could come down from the adrenaline crash and realize that he had Steve exactly where he’d fantasized for so long.

He was _not_ going to hit on his best friend of more than twenty years, especially not while said best friend was suffering from a... werewolf hangover, for lack of a better term.

It took forever for Steve to stop shivering — long enough for Bucky to recover a vague memory of Steve throwing off the blankets, complaining that he was too hot in his fur. _Moonset,_ he thought, trying and failing to remember what time the moon was supposed to set, and failing to give a damn what time it was now. The apocalyptic snowfall meant he didn’t have to wake up to open the shop, and if Steve wasn’t rushing to get out of bed, neither was Bucky.

But then Steve did roll over, and Bucky tried to be casual about letting go of his body, but Steve only went far enough to reach the cardboard box that Bucky was using as a bachelor-style nightstand. Bucky lifted his head, causing the kitten to fall off the pillow and onto the sheets. It promptly darted under the blankets for the foot of the bed, leaving him in fear of his toes and other, more important parts ending up as cat toys, at least until Steve laid back down, blankets pulled up to the hearing aids now in his ears.

Right. He’d plugged them into a charger last night, right before Bucky had fallen asleep without brushing his teeth. _Shit_. Way to make a good first-thing-in-the-morning impression.

“So, uh,” Steve said awkwardly, blue eyes soft with sleep, though his face was pinched and wary.

Bucky managed a sleepy smile and tried not to breathe too heavily in Steve’s direction. “I guess the fur’s not permanent.”

Whatever Steve had expected to hear, it probably hadn’t been that. He laughed and ducked his head, showing off his long lashes. “Yeah. I didn’t, uh... I mean, that wasn’t how I meant to, you know...”

“Come out as a werewolf?”

Steve gave his patented you-have-disappointed-me scowl, which was less than intimidating now that he lacked fangs and claws. “I guess.”

Bucky shrugged, trying and failing to hide a grin. “Well, fair’s fair.”

“Huh?”

“You coming out as a werewolf. Me coming out as bi.”

Something about the way Steve’s eyes went wide made Bucky go over the last few seconds.

_Oops._

Coming out as bi to his best friend was something he should’ve done years ago, except for the whole emailing-or-video-chatting-internationally-usually-from-a-military-post thing. As the years had passed, Bucky just got used to “I’ll tell him one day in person” being some distant, never-reachable goal. Definitely _not_ a goal to reach while in bed with the person who’d been Bucky’s first, longest-lasting bi crush, when said person was naked and had been, up until about ten seconds earlier, leaching Bucky’s body heat.

“Oh,” Steve finally croaked, nothing like the deep, rumbling growl from last night. “Me, too.”

Sleep-fogged and half-panicked — not to mention all too aware of the kitten somewhere under the blankets, possibly primed to attack delicate parts of one or both of them — Bucky said, “But I’m not a werewolf.”

Steve’s cheeks went crimson, and not from the chill in the room. But despite the blush, he lifted his chin and defiantly said, “I’m bi.”

_Oh._

Bucky was used to his arm having to occasionally cycle, sort of like a reboot. Now, his brain did the same thing, powering down to clear out the cobwebs, then coming back online, hopefully at full capacity, though it seemed to get stuck about halfway. Because Steve was a werewolf and Bucky was a cyborg and they were both bisexual and partially or completely naked in bed together.

Every cell in Bucky’s body was urging him to make the sort of rash decision that could be either amazing or catastrophic, so he did the only rational thing possible.

“We should do this over coffee.”

Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “‘Do this’?” he quoted, and it was Bucky’s turn to blush.

“Talk.” A nudge against his foot reminded him that they also had other priorities. Four more of them, hopefully not breaking into the air ducts or burning down the apartment by chewing through the wiring. “And kittens.”

“The kittens.” Steve sat up, scrubbing both hands over his face. “Shit. I forgot about them.”

“You brought me five kittens and _forgot about them?_ ” Bucky had to tease. It was that or he’d try to wrap Steve in blankets again, pull him down, maybe hint at the kiss he’d been thinking about for years.

Steve looked over his shoulder at Bucky and shrugged awkwardly. “Instinct.”

 _That_ was baffling enough to wake Bucky up at least another notch. He propped on his metal arm, shivering when cold air rushed under the blankets, and asked, “You _instinctively_ brought me kittens?”

“No, asshole.” Steve smacked the blankets over his other arm. “I had to get somewhere safe, and I just... knew where to find you. The kittens just sort of... happened.”

Any other time, Bucky might have made a wisecrack about werewolves helping kittens rather than eating them, but there was something he remembered from last night... And something in Steve’s voice now...

“You didn’t shift,” Bucky said as two and two added up to four. “You showed up right around moonrise — maybe _after_ moonrise — but you didn’t shift until the kittens were safe.”

Steve let out a shaky sigh. “Until _I_ was safe.” This time, instead of a smack, he just rested his hand on the blankets, fingers pressing through the layers. “It hurts, holding off the shift. Two nights ago...” A shiver passed through his whole body, and Bucky sat up, trying to get the blankets from in front of them both to cover Steve’s back. Steve didn’t help; he just leaned into Bucky’s arms and dropped his head, mumbling, “That’s why I found you. I knew you’d keep me safe, so I _could_ shift.”

There was no way Bucky could deny himself the indulgence. He hugged Steve close and pressed his face to Steve’s hair. “Thank god you remembered where Uncle Bernie’s old bookstore was.”

“I didn’t,” Steve said into the blankets separating him from Bucky’s chest. “I mean, sort of, but just the area. I’ve been in Russia, remember? D.C. streets are a fucking nightmare.”

Something inside Bucky twinged at the thought of Steve wandering the streets, lost and in pain, scared for himself — probably more scared for the kittens, knowing him. “You got lucky. You were cutting it close. You should’ve called.”

Steve shook his head, hair rustling against Bucky’s stubble. “Couldn’t. It took all my focus to stay in my skin. I —” He shivered, and Bucky had to resist the urge to pull him closer, or they’d end up on top of each other. “I could sort of... smell you?”

The wow-factor was pretty quickly drowned out by panic, because morning breath and dirty laundry and Bucky was pretty sure something had died in his fridge. But then he shook his head — he was _not_ nuzzling Steve’s hair — and said, “But your hearing?”

Steve’s exasperated sigh blew warmth through the blankets and onto Bucky’s skin. “Figures, yeah? I could smell the socks behind the bathroom trash can but still couldn’t hear worth a damn.”

“I... I haven’t had a chance to do laundry.”

“Bucky.” Steve pulled away to look at him with eyes full of worry and fatigue, like the brash righteousness that had carried him through life was finally running low. “You said something about coffee?”

“Yeah.” Bucky licked his lips, catching the way Steve glanced down then back up, and put his hand on Steve’s shoulder — a tight, friendly grip that promised support without dragging him in for a kiss he might not want. Steve’s “bi” didn’t necessarily mean “bi and interested,” after all. “Go dig through my closet. The stuff that’s hanging is all clean. I’ll brush my teeth and get the coffee started. Meet me downstairs when you’re done. Okay?”

“Okay.” Steve smiled faintly. “Thanks, Buck.”

 _Do not kiss,_ Bucky told himself, settling for a pat on Steve’s shoulder and then getting the hell out of bed. “I’ll feed the kittens, too. Leave them upstairs for now. They should be okay.”


	6. Chapter 6

_To: shuri@med.wdg.wk_  
_From: whitewolf@patient.med.wdg.wk_  
_Subject: A new project related to my new arm?_

_Your Highness,_

_I think I have a problem only you can solve, but it’s not something I can really talk about. I still have the phone you gave me. Can you please call me whenever? Don’t worry about time zones. This is really important._

_It’s about hearing aids, only sort of. I can’t go into any more detail, even on a secure VPN._

_I’d owe you big time._

_Thanks,_

_Bucky_

Much as Bucky hated to be cryptic, he wasn’t a hundred percent sure the NSA wasn’t monitoring traffic going to Wakandan servers. And while yeah, he trusted that Wakanda could keep the NSA out with about zero effort, he was no computer expert. Was the connection from his computer — which _wasn’t_ Wakandan technology — to the Wakandan Design Group’s VPN secure?

Either way, he wasn’t going to put the word “werewolf” anywhere in print or online, especially not in D.C. He’d burn down the whole damn capitol before putting Steve in danger.

Figuring that was the best he could do, he hit _Save Draft_ and turned on the coffee pot. Even though the fresh pastry delivery had been cancelled, he had a half-shelf of samples still in the walk-in cooler. Croissants, brownies, cinnamon rolls... _Shit_. He couldn’t feed Steve nothing but pure carbs and sugar.

It wasn’t seven in the morning yet, so he grabbed an assortment of pastries and went back to the computer on the counter. Thank god for the modern world, he thought, hoping he wasn’t risking salmonella or bovine spongiform disease by adding hamburger patties, a package of steaks, two cartons of eggs, and other staples to his delivery order. Just in case the stuff was hand-chosen by his driver and not fed into a box from a conveyor belt, he increased the tip accordingly and confirmed the delivery for a few hours from now.

Even with the plumbing repairs he’d had done, the pipes rattled whenever the water was running in one of the apartments upstairs. The rattle stopped as the coffee finished brewing, and he had the cinnamon rolls heated up by the time Steve came down, practically drowning in Bucky’s red tracksuit with Wakandan writing down one leg and across the chest. With his slightly-too-long wet hair tucked behind his ears, his hearing aids were visible.

“Feel better?” Bucky asked, bringing both plates to the table by the most comfortable armchairs, since Steve didn’t have to fight with a tail anymore.

“Much.” Steve was worn down enough that he didn’t fuss or try to help; he just collapsed into one of the chairs with a deep sigh. “Look, I’ve been thinking about what you said, wanting to give me a job here, and I can’t.”

Bucky had expected this. He didn’t bother answering until he had two regular-sized mugs of coffee filled and set next to the untouched cinnamon rolls. And because he’d expected this, he had an answer prepared: “Who else am I going to trust?”

Steve’s frown was more thoughtful than belligerent, which hinted that Bucky was on the right track. “You said you hired people before you went to Africa.”

“ _Assistant_ managers.” Bucky picked up one of the plates and held it out to Steve, forcing him to politely take it. He’d forgotten forks, but he was too hungry to bother getting them. He tore off a piece of his own cinnamon roll and pointed it at Steve, saying, “You, I can trust with the keys, the alarm code, the cash drawer... Right?”

“Well, yeah —”

Bucky chewed, swallowed, and said, “And wherever you’re living, you probably don’t have the privacy to be a werewolf for a night or two every month.”

A muscle in Steve’s jaw worked — stubbornness, not chewing. “I can get a new place.”

“Which leaves me with space I won’t rent to anyone else.” Bucky licked his fingers clean (and intentionally didn’t look to see if Steve was watching) and took a little plastic box from the pocket of his jeans. He opened the lid, careful not to scatter the pills inside, and put the box on the table. “It’s not just trusting you with the business. It’s trusting you, period.”

Still frowning, Steve looked from the pills to his face and back. “I thought you said your arm doesn’t hurt anymore?”

“It doesn’t.” Bucky took a deep breath, telling his heart to stop overreacting. This was nothing to be ashamed of, and he’d only kept one secret from Steve, ever — a secret he’d blurted out this morning. He pointed to the biggest pill and said, “That’s one a day, to help keep me steady. It doesn’t _fix_ the PTSD, but it sort of levels things out.” He pointed to the smaller round one, saying, “That one’s for if I have a panic attack and can’t get out of it myself. It takes about an hour to kick in, which means I need someone here for backup. The only reason I told everyone to take off yesterday and today was I figured I wouldn’t have customers, so I wouldn’t have to worry about closing the shop for an hour if something did happen. The last two are for migraines: one at the start, one two hours after, if the first one doesn’t fix it.”

“I didn’t...” Steve began quietly. He shook his head. “It’s bad, then? The PTSD?”

Bucky had asked himself that a million times, and his answers were still all over the map. “At first, yeah, but I didn’t realize it, because I was dealing with losing an arm. It got worse before it got better, but it’s okay now.” Then a thought hit, and he let out a relieved little laugh, leaning back in the cozy chair. “I was seeing a local therapist, but the docs at the clinic in Wakanda weren’t exactly impressed. Now I do video sessions with them a couple times a week. Which is something I need to talk to you about.”

“Huh?”

Channeling Mom, Bucky said, “Eat while I talk,” and didn’t say another word until Steve obediently ripped into the cinnamon roll. “Wakanda’s light years ahead of anything you can imagine, and they’ve only let outsiders know about one percent of what they can do. I think they might... know something about werewolves.”

Steve’s eyes went wide, and he swallowed with an audible gulp. “Nobody can know!”

“I trust them.” Memory flashed before Bucky’s eyes: the first time he’d met Shuri. In a haze of painkillers, tranquilizers, and anxiety neurochemicals, he’d taken one look at her — _a kid!_ — and thought the whole offer from the Wakandans was some sort of elaborate prank. “It was the King’s own sister, Shuri, who designed my arm and the neural interface. She makes Tony Stark look like he flunked kindergarten.”

Steve huddled in the armchair, looking like he was trying to turn invisible. “I _can’t_ , Bucky. They’ll turn me into a lab rat.”

“Maybe if you were the only werewolf, yeah,” Bucky admitted, “but you’re not. You got bit by one, which means there are even more out there somewhere, and I _guarantee_ that the Wakandans know about them.”

Steve bit his lip and stared down at his half-eaten cinnamon roll — a reminder that Bucky needed to eat so he could take his pill. He finished his food and washed the pill down with a swig of coffee just a little too hot to drink, so he put the mug back down to cool some more.

“You really trust them?” Steve finally asked, meeting Bucky’s eyes.

Instead of a glib “yes,” Bucky took a deep breath, considering his next move. “When I went there, I’ll admit, I was desperate. The Stark Tech arm was good, but it had problems. A couple times, it damn near fried my brain. And the docs had me on entirely the wrong meds, so I was always angry, which meant even more meds that made me all fuzzy.” He winced. “Sorry, bad choice of words there.”

Steve snorted, but there was no humor in his voice when he asked, “How come you never told me any of this?”

“Because I didn’t even realize it until after they got me into the right kind of therapy.” Bucky leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and looked into Steve’s eyes. “You can trust them, Steve.”

“I don’t know...”

“Plus, there’s something else.” Bucky held out his metal hand, flexing his fingers to catch Steve’s attention. “They’ve got a whole medical division working on assistive technology — not just prosthetic limbs. I was thinking maybe they could work on hearing aids you could wear in your other form.”

Steve’s flush of embarrassment gave way to a flicker of hope that vanished when he narrowed his eyes. “Why would they help me? I’m nobody.”

He was anything _but_ nobody to Bucky, but Bucky’s opinion didn’t matter here. Only Steve’s. So Bucky changed the focus, saying, “Because Shuri loves a challenge. Getting to design hearing aids for a werewolf is right up her alley.” He grinned, teasingly adding, “You’d be the best thank-you present I could ever give her.”

Steve rolled his eyes, mouth twitching with the effort to hide the smile Bucky could see anyway. “You trying to set me up on a date with a princess?”

“Fuck, no.” It slipped out, and Bucky braced himself too late, suddenly at the precipice he hadn’t expected to reach this soon. At the very least, he’d wanted to wait for a couple cups of coffee, maybe get Steve to relax and agree to stay as a friend first. But if he backed down now, he’d never get the guts to reach this point again. “I’d rather keep you for myself.”


	7. Chapter 7

The way Steve stared at Bucky, mouth slightly open, eyes wide, was anything but reassuring. Everything in Bucky screamed to take it back, to turn it into a joke, but... no. Last night, he’d been too tired and full of post-werewolf shock to consider the ramifications of sharing a bed with his best friend, but now he couldn’t hide his feelings. More to the point, he _shouldn’t_.

So he picked up his coffee and burned his tongue, looking into the cup instead of across the table to give Steve some mental space to process.

“Okay,” Steve said slowly, drawing the word out. “First, you really trust her? The princess?”

 _Shit_. They were pretending that last part of the conversation had never happened. Bucky’s gut turned to ice, and he tried to push his brain back into just-friends mode. He got up to refill his cup, trusting Steve’s hearing aids to catch his words in the silence of the shop. “Yeah. I do.”

“Then yeah. You can tell her about me.”

“Good.” Bucky threw a smile Steve’s way without focusing on his face, then woke up his computer to send the email he’d written. He checked the phone in his other pocket, making sure it was on and had good signal, since there were probably cell towers out all over the place thanks to the blizzard. The home screen lit up: full battery, five bars, encryption enabled. It was the middle of the afternoon in Wakanda, which meant Shuri could call at any moment.

Bucky stayed behind the counter, rinsing the mug he’d given Steve last night, then refilling his own cup. A clatter made him turn and flinch in surprise that Steve had come up behind him, on the employee side of the counter, and put his plate on the edge of the sink.

So much for hypervigilance. Then again, Steve had always flown under Bucky’s radar. He was _safe_ , even as a werewolf.

“About” — Steve hesitated — “the other thing. Us.”

“That’s totally separate from the job.” Bucky shot Steve a look that was probably too desperate but the best he could manage. “The apartment, too.”

“Bucky —”

“You can have the place on the third floor all to —”

“Bucky!”

Steve’s exasperation finally got Bucky to stop babbling and look over. He was standing close to Bucky’s side, close enough to touch, and Bucky got both hands around his mug, even though the ceramic burned his real fingers.

But Steve didn’t hesitate. He put his hand on Bucky’s arm and gripped tightly as if holding him in place. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

 _Good question_. Bucky laughed a little desperately, because he didn’t have a good answer — not in hindsight anyway. All those years wasted, all those excuses that didn’t mean a damn thing, because Bucky could have told Steve. He could’ve found a way, and to hell with whether or not it would’ve disrupted their lives.

It might’ve cost him his friendship if Steve had said no, but if Steve had said yes, it definitely would’ve been worth the risk.

“I was scared,” he said honestly. “I had a bunch of excuses, going all the way back to high school, but the whole time, I’ve just been scared to say it.”

“I kind of wish...” Steve looked down and shrugged again, fingers clenching. “The few times someone was interested in me, I never really felt the same.” He looked up, hair falling in wet strands over his eyes. “I’d compare them to you, and just, no one ever lived up to it.”

The little flutter low in Bucky’s gut thawed the ice in his chest. “Yeah?”

Before Steve could answer, a heavy drum beat rang out from Bucky’s phone. He snatched it off the counter, hit the answer button, and propped the phone on top of the coffee machine, where the camera could pick him up clearly.

Shuri’s face filled the display, dark skin warmed by the afternoon sun filtering through the clouds. The rocks around her marked her location, even though her phone filtered out the roar of the waterfall just a few yards from where she sat. Bucky had climbed those falls what felt like a hundred times as part of his physical therapy, after he’d gotten his new arm.

“What’s this new project for me?” she asked, eyes alight with interest. “More Stark Tech for me to improve?”

“Even better,” Bucky said, though he glanced over at Steve, silently asking permission. When Steve nodded, Bucky turned back to Shuri and said, “My best friend’s been wearing hearing aids all his life, only he —”

“Boyfriend,” Steve interrupted, though the word came out a little strained.

Derailed, Bucky blinked at him, entirely unable to hide his tentative grin. “Really?” he asked, forgetting all about Shuri and the whole werewolf thing.

Steve nodded, his expression calm and composed, now that he’d made up his mind. This was the Steve Bucky loved, defiant and determined, willing to fight for what he wanted, no matter the cost. “That’s where we were headed, right?” he challenged.

“Yeah. I guess we were,” Bucky said, and there was no longer anything tentative about his smile.

Steve took a step closer, and Bucky couldn’t remember cupping his hands around Steve’s jaw, but he had, so it was all too easy to lean in and finally kiss the man he’d been in love with for so many years, since before he really knew what love even was. And for all Steve’s implications that he hadn’t done much in the way of dating, there was absolutely nothing wrong with his kiss. He buried his hands in Bucky’s hair and gave a sharp tug, turning the kiss from sweet to breath-stealing in a single heartbeat.

“You know,” said a voice that wasn’t Steve — a voice that made Bucky pull back in horror, because _oh shit, the princess_. “I can’t enjoy the soap opera if all I can see is the top of your head, Bucky.”

“Oh my god,” Steve said in a strangled whisper, letting go of Bucky’s hair to bury his face in his hands. “Oh my god.”

Bucky barely managed not to hide himself, only because he knew Shuri would be even more ruthless if he did. And while her wit was sharper than Steve’s claws, she didn’t use it for harm — not beyond mortifying embarrassment, anyway.

“So yeah, boyfriend,” Bucky said, deliberately changing the phone’s angle to get Steve in the frame. Shuri’s whole face lit up with the sort of impish smile that made grown warriors run for cover, but Bucky had one ace up his sleeve. “He’s also a werewolf,” he said, deadpan.

 _“Bucky!”_ Steve practically squeaked as Shuri’s jaw dropped.

Then she burst out laughing so long and hard that Bucky had to laugh with her. When she recovered, she grinned and said, “White Wolf was a nickname, not a life goal.”

Bucky groaned over Steve’s soft, “White Wolf?”

Mercifully, Shuri dropped the teasing and said, “So, a werewolf in need of hearing aids. I think I can work with this.”

Steve’s head came up, even though he was still blushing. “Really?”

Shuri’s expression softened. “Really.”

“But I can’t —”

After all these years, Steve was still sensitive about growing up poor — doubly so now that he’d quit his job. So Bucky interrupted, “Even if you gave us travel clearance, we can’t get to you any time soon. Every airport on the east coast is shut down due to snow.”

She scoffed. “That’s because your commercial planes are still made by Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. I can come to you.”

“It’s not that much of a rush,” Steve protested, wide-eyed. “You’re — I mean, you have to be — Much more important things —”

“My brother owes me a trip to the States,” she said, dismissing Steve’s concerns with a casual shrug. “And I love the snow.”

But because Steve was Steve, he still blurted, “Is it _safe?_ ”

Shuri’s expression turned fond. “Our jets are designed to handle any weather on the planet.”

 _Or off it, probably,_ Bucky thought, though he didn’t say it outright. “Thank you. Are you making this an official trip? The hotels around here are probably all booked with people trapped by the snow, but I can... figure something out with the spare apartment upstairs, as long as you like kittens.”

“We have a very comfortable embassy in D.C.” The mischievous glint came back to her eyes. “Not that your State Department knows about it.”

Was she being clever, showing off that she’d somehow managed to pull up Steve’s bio while on a video call in the middle of the wilderness? Or was she just being smug about Wakanda fooling the US government, right under its nose? Possibly both.

Bucky nodded. “And you’ve got our address.” The words — _our address_ — sent tingles all the way down to his toes. It wasn’t official or even practical to move Steve out of his apartment in this weather, but it was happening anyway.

“I, uh, have to shift when the full moon is out,” Steve said, darting glances between Bucky and the phone. “I should be able to do it any time, but the full moon... you know.”

“Hmm.” Shuri tipped her head, eyes narrowed in thought. Then she nodded and said, “I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” Bucky said, but she’d already disconnected the call.

Steve let out a breath and leaned against the counter, giving Bucky a dazed look. “So, uh. She’s...”

“Yeah.” Bucky smiled and took Steve’s hand, reveling in the fact that he _could._ “I know this all happened kind of fast, but she really can help.”

“That’s pretty obvious.” Steve looked up at Bucky, eyes narrowed. “I got the feeling werewolves weren’t a surprise to her.”

“I was hoping she’d know something.” Bucky tugged, pulling Steve right into his arms. “And since she’s sixteen, maybe we’d better get some things out of the way before she shows up and turns everything upside-down?”

“Huh?” In a blink, Steve caught up. “Oh. Yeah, we probably should.”

“We’ve got” — Bucky glanced at the phone, which hadn’t gone into sleep mode yet, and did some quick calculations — “about two hours before the delivery window for all the cat stuff and groceries I ordered.”

Steve hummed, wrapping his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, fingers tangling in Bucky’s hair. “Two hours... I guess that’s an okay start.”

 _Yes._ Bucky leaned down to get back to the kissing, but Steve gave a sharp tug, pulling him up short.

“Not here,” Steve said, taking a deliberate step back before he let go of Bucky’s hair.

“What? Why not?”

“Bad enough this place was full of kittens last night. If I’m going to be a manager, we’re not starting with another health code violation on day one.” The stubborn bastard actually turned and headed for the back of the store, leaving Bucky dazed and staring at his ass.

Then Bucky’s brain kicked back into gear, sending him after Steve. He didn’t even go back for his phone. “So you’ll do it?”

Steve shot a sly look over his shoulder. “Do _what_ , exactly?” he said in a tone of voice that took Bucky from business talk to a whole different sort of negotiation in two seconds flat.

“Uh.”

With a smug grin, Steve said, “Upstairs, Buck. Now.”

“Yes, sir,” Bucky said, hitting the lights as he left the coffee shop for the stairwell. As it turned out, day two of the most unsuccessful business opening ever was working out just fine after all.


End file.
